The Drowning Pool

by Syd Moore

  Maggie coughed and sent me a what-are-you-on-about look.

  I shrugged. ‘Well, he’s got serious issues with women. He decided to call himself the Witchfinder General and managed to get rid of whole families of,’ I lifted my fingers to draw imaginary quotation marks, “‘witches” in his brief career from 1644 to 1647. Some sources suggest that he was from Lancashire, others from Essex or Suffolk. That he worked in shipping as a clerk and spent some time in Amsterdam learning his official trade where he witnessed several witch trials. Controversy also exists over whether or not he died in 1647. No one is sure, if he did actually cark it, what the cause was. He would have only been in his mid-to-late twenties, though that was middle-aged back then. Lots of theories about what happened to him.’

  I looked up to catch her expression. ‘And?’ she said, eyebrows furrowed, not giving anything away.

  I jerked my chair closer to the desk. ‘Well, I’d like to find out more about him. There’s something there which doesn’t add up.’

  Maggie nodded. ‘And your suspicions are?’

  ‘I’m wondering how he died or where he went. I think he might have ducked out of the country and spread his poison elsewhere.’

  ‘Angle?’ Maggie drummed her fingers on the desk.

  ‘I don’t want to say yet. He had female collaborators. Could be part of a bigger series – The Essex Girls’ History of the World.’

  ‘Now you’re talking. What you thinking – six, twelve?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Let me see what I can come up with.’

  ‘I like it. I really like it. Oh yes,’ she reached into her handbag. ‘Remind me to tell you about something when you’ve finished.’ She brought out a small rectangular card and laid it on the desk. ‘Go on. I’ve stopped you mid-flow.’

  ‘Well, that’s about it really. I’m going to get something good out of it – I’ve got a tingle that’s telling me I’ve hit something hidden which could be eminently controversial.’

  Now she came to life. ‘That’s what we need. Do you reckon we could get some coverage in the nationals with it?’

  I nodded. ‘Deffo. This is far more than an “And Finally” on Look East.’

  Maggie’s eyes were fixed on my face. ‘Good, good. God knows we need to boost circulation.’ She heaved herself forward and picked up the mug.

  I mirrored her and took a sip of coffee. It was still hot but delicious so I gulped it greedily, feeling it heat my throat, then said, ‘I thought you were doing great.’

  Maggie sighed. ‘We are, in terms of readership and profile. Best it’s ever been. But our landlord’s putting the rent up; the price of paper is going through the roof right now, and what with the recession or whatever this dire slump we’re passing through is called, a lot of our regular advertisers have had to pull. A fair few have gone bust, owing us. Marketing is always the first thing to go when times are hard.’

  I stared up. ‘I had no idea.’

  Maggie reached for a fag and projected her chair to the sash window. Lighting it, she pushed the bottom half of the window up and craned her neck to the opening.

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone, Mercedes. I’m confiding in you as a friend not an employee. I don’t want it to get out to the others.’ She blew a long sigh of smoke out through the gap. ‘We’ll be lucky if we’re still trading this time next year.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  She turned to face me. The kitten face had disappeared. There was more of a hungry alley cat look going on there. ‘Pull this article off and I’ll triple your fee and throw in expenses.’

  I sat back and looked her squarely in the face. ‘That’s a generous offer. Considering …’

  She laughed, and the kitten returned. ‘Let’s call it a calculated risk. I have faith in you.’

  A strong blast of cold air came in through the crack, scattering several loose papers across the desk and blowing my notebook shut. I gathered them up and returned them to the desk, feeling a little less excited than I had been just moments before.

  ‘Thank you for the vote of confidence. I’m not sure that I deserve it. Not yet. You said there was something else you wanted to tell me.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Maggie flicked her half-smoked ciggy butt out of the window and pulled it shut. ‘I had an intriguing encounter on Saturday. Creative Industries networking night up in London.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ I giggled. ‘Does Jules approve?’

  ‘Shut up,’ she said but softened it with a smile. ‘Nothing like that, you foul-minded harlot. Some posh bloke. Full on Man-From-Del-Monte linen suit, cut glass accent.’ She plucked a card from her rolodex and read it. ‘William Roben, of Portillo Publishing. He’d heard of the magazine. Loved it. Or more to the point, he loved you.’

  ‘Me?’ I was gobsmacked. Although I was developing a reputation locally I had no idea that anyone outside of the area might have read my work.

  ‘Yep. Very intrigued. He’s looking for authors to develop their historical list. History being the new black and all that. I hope you don’t mind but I gave him your home number. He said he’d give you a call.’

  ‘A book! Is that what you mean?’ I couldn’t quite believe it. Though I was happy as a hack, every journo secretly yearned to write a book. Even as a child I had been drawn more to the idea of books than journalism, but making a living as an author seemed far more of a Herculean effort than writing short sassy pieces that were published quickly. And, more importantly, paid promptly. But to publish a book. Wow.

  ‘I think that was the suggestion, given that he’s a book publisher. But wait and see. He might just want you to come up with some ideas, then commission them to other established authors. I dunno. I’m not big on that area of the industry. But,’ she leant forwards and waggled her right index finger at me, ‘if you get anything going with him, I want to be able to say “you read it here first”, right?’

  ‘Of course.’ I promised to be true to my word. After all, Maggie had been great to me.

  ‘Okay,’ her tone changed: she was finishing with me now. ‘Can’t stay here chatting about books and whatnot. You get going. Crack on with your witches. When do you think you can give me an idea of where you’re going with these leads?’

  I told her about two weeks should do it and stood up, dismissed.

  ‘Great,’ she said as I made for the door. ‘Oh and Mercedes. How’s your mum?’

  I paused and turned, glancing out the window at the waving branches of the sycamores, unable to meet her eye. ‘Just going there now. Not good I’m afraid.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘Well, give her my love. You know where I am if you need anything.’

  I told her she’d be the first on my list and said goodbye.

  She was third actually but I appreciated the gesture.

  Contrary to popular belief, in my experience hospices are bright places full of chit-chat and laughter. People tend to think of them as dark and depressing but they’re set up to send folks off in the most life-affirming way. If you get what I mean.

  Mum had been moved to Green Acres two weeks ago after her last stroke. The consensus was that this would give Joe, her boyfriend, a little respite, but looking back now I think I knew she didn’t have much time left. I just didn’t want to admit it. To me the stay was all about rest and recreation.

  It had been a gradual deterioration. I assumed that her first bout of depression came on after Dad left us, when I was fifteen. But later conversations with my father when I was adult enough revealed Mum had been in and out of hospital all my life. At the time, I couldn’t quite believe him but afterwards, reflecting on my childhood I started to remember the absences, when Mum, a relatively successful landscape artist, had travelled off for ‘commissions’ around the country.

  It turned out two-thirds of her sojourns were spent in private hospitals. She wasn’t too bad for most of my twenties, then as I entered my thirties, she had a couple of wobbles and ended up inside for a month after I divorced my husband, Christop
her. I always wondered if that had something to do with it. She hated me living alone and had objected to me reverting to Asquith, which I thought was mad. But there you go. I did it anyway and moved back here, for a change of scene and because I wanted to be nearer Mum. Good job too, as three months after the move, she had her first stroke. Then another. The third one left her permanently cared for in the home round the corner. This, the fourth, had left her paralysed down the right side of her face.

  I tried to get in on most days, but I’d had stuff to sort out and that Wednesday was the first time I’d seen her since the weekend.

  Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her. To me she was still as fresh and fragrant as she had been in my teens – a wonderfully charismatic woman with dark lustrous hair and an hourglass figure, reminiscent of Gina Lollobrigida. I adored her. Though I had more of an inclination for books and sailing, like Dad, than I did for sketching and oils, I’d often accompany her on trips around the East coast, where we’d set up easels and stare out over the North Sea trying to capture the day in a picture. She of course did it wonderfully. More often than not, I’d get bored and go for a walk or a swim returning home with just a thin strip of horizon which my dad would scoff at but which Mum would fuss over and hang on the wall.

  Best of all, I liked watching her paint in her studio when she had her hair tucked back into a scarf, one of Dad’s old paint-spattered shirts on. She would screw her dark brown eyes into little nuts of concentration and paint for hours and hours, tiny little brushstrokes that came out of nowhere and massed into landscapes from her imagination: steep craggy mountains, high sun, storms and pines would emerge on her canvas. Alien, undulating landscapes in ambers and reds and violets and greens that were rarely seen in our flat Essex world. They were the pictures that came into my head before I slipped into dreams at night and more often than not, they’d form the background to some of my more exciting adventures.

  I’d brought some of them with me on my last visit to Green Acres. I think Mum had been appreciative, though it was hard to tell. Her speech had been greatly impaired by the last stroke and we communicated mostly with our eyes and gestures.

  I was relieved to find her sitting up in bed.

  ‘Cedes.’ Beneath the twisted features I could see a half smile forming. She held out her good arm to me.

  I took it and kissed her forehead. ‘How you doing, Mum?’

  She did a sort of nod using the upper left half of her body.

  I smiled and perched on the bed by her good side. ‘I’ve just seen Maggie Haines. She sends her love.’

  Mum squeezed my hand in approval. She had always liked Maggie. Even when the teen vixen was leading me astray Mum actively encouraged the friendship, calling Mags ‘a woman of character’. That’s how she spoke, my mum: in impeccable received pronunciation, articulating every consonant, nuancing each spoken vowel like the Queen. A lot of our neighbours thought it was affected, ‘put on’, ‘all airs and graces’. After all we lived in a modest terraced house with a reasonable but not overly comfortable income. But Dad loved it and encouraged me to adopt Mum’s fashion. Despite their efforts I ended up with an Essex accent that dropped its consonants and cut short on the vowels. ‘People will think you’re stupid,’ Dad said.

  ‘I’ll just ’ave to prove ’em wrong then, won’t I?’

  Anyway. So there I was in hospital, rabbiting on about my meeting with Mags, when Mum squeezed my hand and mouthed as well as she could – ‘JOE.’

  I’m ashamed to say I felt a little indignant, even as she was lying there virtually at death’s door, but in all honesty I did. I hadn’t even got on to the publisher yet but she’d cut me off mid-flow.

  ‘What about him?’ I asked, knowing my face was screwed into a frown but not bothering to hide my displeasure.

  It clearly took her a lot of effort but with the grunts and a pen in her left hand I learnt her boyfriend had not been in to see her for a while. They had met fifteen years ago when they were both ‘inside’. Joe had been an undiagnosed bipolar, but since then had medicated himself into a relatively regular existence returning to the occupation that had ‘set him off’ several years before – teaching. In terms of success stories, he was up there in the hospital’s top three. He’d done so well, he’d even climbed a few of rungs of the hierarchy in his school and was now a Head of Department. Although he lived in a flat round the corner, Mum and he had never moved in with each other. They needed to keep separate, he once told me, so that they didn’t become dependent. I understood that. He loved Mum dearly and it was clear from early in their relationship that the feeling was mutual. He visited her as often as his work schedule permitted, usually twice a day, and at weekends he spent whole days at Green Acres.

  The frown lingered on my forehead. ‘Perhaps he’s busy. You know what his job’s like. Marking? Parents’ evenings? How long since you last saw him?’

  Mum’s elegant fingers groped round the pencil I had placed onto the pad of paper that never left her side. It took her a while but soon a sketchy figure three emerged.

  I looked at my watch: 16.34 pm. ‘Three hours? He hasn’t been here today?’

  Mum’s lips suckered in. She was disagreeing.

  ‘Not three hours. You can’t mean three days?’

  Back in her bed Mum’s eyes widened.

  ‘Three days? Really? Do you know what’s going on?’

  Mum did the best she could at shrugging but I got the drift. She was worried about him. Her hand went to the pad again. I tore off the three and left her a clean sheet.

  With effort she wrote. ‘Go Joe flat. Key my bag.’

  It was awful to see her brought so low. So imperfectly unable to express her thoughts or articulate herself as she had once done. Poor Mum.

  ‘Of course.’

  She threw the pen at her bag. It hit the leather handle and fell into the dark silk interior. ‘Good shot, Mum.’

  She grunted with irritation. ‘Nah.’

  I took in the creases across her forehead. ‘Now?’ She clenched her good hand.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ I pulled her bag onto my lap and rummaged through it until my fingers closed round a jumble of keys. Two had been placed on a football key ring. They had to be Joe’s. I jangled them in front of Mum’s face. ‘These?’

  She nodded and moved her left hand over mine. ‘Hank you.’

  I leant in and pushed a couple of black strands of hair from her eyes. Despite everything, she still had only a light dusting of grey. ‘Stop worrying about everyone else and take some time to get better yourself.’

  In response she squeezed my hand again.

  I asked if she wanted me to turn on the TV or fetch a drink but she didn’t. She just wanted me to check Joe’s place out. So, I promised her I’d let her know and return asap, insisting as I left, that there was nothing to worry about.

  Like I said, I’ve always been clueless to warning signs.

  LUCIFER’S TEARS

  James Thompson

  A brutal murder.

  A country’s darkest secret.

  A detective pushed to the edge …

  His previous case left Kari Vaara with a scarred face, chronic insomnia and a full body count’s worth of ghosts. A year later, in Helsinki, and Kari is working the graveyard shift in the homicide unit.

  Kari is drawn into the murder-by-torture case of Isa Filippov, the philandering wife of a Russian businessman. Her lover is clearly being framed and while Ivan Filippov’s arrogance is highly suspicious, he’s got friends in high places. Kari is sucked ever deeper and soon the past and present collide in ways no one could have anticipated …

  Discover the hottest new voice in Nordic crime-writing, perfect for fans of Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson.

  ISBN: 978-0-00-733231-9

  £6.99

  Winter 2011

  About the Author

  Syd Moore is the author of The Drowning Pool, a novel inspired by the legend of a 19th Century Essex woman
– the Sea Witch Sarah Moore.

  She is also co-creator of Super Strumps, the game that reclaims female stereotypes through the medium of Top Trumps, and was founding editor of Level 4, an arts and culture magazine based in South Essex.

  Syd has worked extensively in publishing and the book trade and presented Channel 4’s late night book programme, Pulp.

  The Drowning Pool is Syd’s debut novel and her next book will be published by Avon in 2012.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Copyright

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  AVON

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  A Paperback Original 2011

  THE DROWNING POOL. Copyright © Syd Moore 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.